This is OT because the base system here is a zillion year old XP box (don't ask - software won't run on new crap)<br><br>system became unresponsive to keyboard (USB) on the main connection on mobo but worked on front panel connectors. Then those quit.<br>
<br>Clearly a hardware issue. <br><br>Noticed smell of overheated electronics from power supply so replaced it.<br>System had trouble booting but was OK going into safe mode.<br><br>2 main drives in RAID 1 on a 3ware sata RAID card. System not happy about being shutdown uncleanly (many crashes before I was called) and ran a full chckdsk /r on boot drives which reported no errors.<br>
System will auto-reboot on normal startup at splash screen and now complains about new hardware (3ware controller!) in safe-mode. The RAID controller(s) were not changed so maybe a bit of drive scramble in that sector. Time to reload drivers. woo.<br>
<br>Original driver disk nowhere to be found so using latest download from LSI (2009 - about when the controller card went in) to add driver to OS drive(s). <br><br>Can't. Installer requires a VC++ something that requires the windows installer to run. But safe mode won't run the windows installer.<br>
<br>reboot and cuss. Try floppy image - dug out usb floppy and found a single working floppy disk (thought I had tossed all of those?). Install would run but reboot asked for drivers again.<br><br>cuss more when safe-mode now automatically reboots on startup. No way to access system drives anymore.<br>
<br>Replace motherboard, CPU, RAM, CD drive and power supply. Boots to safe mode (YAY!) for new driver install. But original drivers for both RAID cards (other is an adaptec with a mirror pair with application data) were now needing to be installed. Plus now need to "re-authenticate" (cuss. spit.)<br>
<br>???? How are the originally working 3 days ago drivers vanishing ????<br><br>unplug EVERYTHING, all drives, all raid cards, and try to boot from a known good XP hard drive built on a different system<br><br>It does the same thing as the other drives! Gets to the XP splash screen then reboots the systems.<br>
<br>F8 - set no restart on error - no change, set debug mode - just restarts with no messages<br><br>Insert original installation CD to try for recovery console - blue screens after _long_ fight to get driver disk (see floppy) to work.<br>
<br>Try newer XP-SP3 disk - blue screens<br><br>memtest says all RAM is just fine (single pass all tests).<br><br>W T F !!!!!?????!!!!!?????<br><br><ihatewindowsihatewindowsihatewindowsihatewindowsihatewindows><br clear="all">
<br>-- <br>-- <br>James P. Kinney III<br><i><i><i><i><br></i></i></i></i>Every time you stop a school, you will have to build a jail. What you
gain at one end you lose at the other. It's like feeding a dog on his
own tail. It won't fatten the dog.<br>
- Speech 11/23/1900 Mark Twain<br><i><i><i><i><br><a href="http://electjimkinney.org" target="_blank">http://electjimkinney.org</a><br><a href="http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/</a><br>
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